google reader > bloglines at effective web ministry notes

google reader > bloglines

filed under Tools by rob on 07Oct06 @ 6:07 pm EST

Last month I told you about the new Google Reader. I’ve used it for a week straight and I have to say that I think it’s better than Bloglines. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s better.

Steve Rubel says that Bloglines Has Lost its Way and I can’t say that I disagree with him at all. Gina Trapani at Lifehacker made the switch too. Her review is great and I encourage you to check it out.

There’s a couple of things I really like about gReader:

It’s easy to add subscriptions even if you don’t know the RSS feed
Under my subscriptions list I can have it show only what is updated
Use tags instead of folders (though I’m not multi-tagging yet)
I like the concept of “web inbox” so it’s similar to gMail

My current wish list:

Better “email this post”. Bloglines is MUCH better with this and it’s how I often point people to great posts.
Add tags to feeds when you subscribe.
~~Mobile version.~~ UPDATE: They have a mobile reader though it could be improved.

I think I’ve made the switch.

UPDATE: Matt Cutts made the switch too, but he’s a Google guy anyway!

UPDATE: A few more updates have been released and I found and tried the mobile reader. Google has adopted the “river of news” philosophy. That is, what ever is most recent is at the top and everything is jumbled. You can, however, sort items by tagging. It’s just like a blog. Bloglines is traditional archive/folder based. I think the river of news stuff is the trend now. gMail does it also.

6 Responses to “google reader > bloglines”

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1 Keith on Oct 11th, 2006 said:

I’ve used Google reader for a few days now and it’s growing on me. I like the web version very much. I like that it only marks a message as “read” if I click on it to read it. I never liked that about Bloglines where it would mark all messages as read when I opened the feed.

I mostly read messages on my Treo 650. Bloglines Mobile is much more mature, but since Rob mentioned Google’s mobile reader, I’m getting used to it. I’ve learned to use tags to sort out the “river of news”. Before I began tagging, my technorati feed turned my “river of news” into a “raging flood” that made it hard to read my friends’ blogs!
2 rob on Oct 11th, 2006 said:

Yeah, the mobile reader isn’t too bad especially with tags.

Keith, since you use the Treo, you could try out Feedblitz to have posts emailed to you instead (albeit a day late).
3 Doug on Oct 11th, 2006 said:

I have made the switch too. I was sold after setting up an account and then inserting the Google Reader into my personalized Google home page. It is so cool how it displays the messages and allows you to select the category or folder the feeds are in. I no longer have to go to another website to view my feeds.
4 Jayson on Jan 6th, 2007 said:

Have you installed the Greasemonkey scripts to add search capabilities?
5 Jayson on Jan 6th, 2007 said:

Ooops… link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/12/script-for-google-reader-search.html
6 rob on Jan 10th, 2007 said:

@Jayson: no, I’ve not messed with the ol greasy monkey.